You are here

Sojourners in the News

Last week, a black professor told me he always asks his white students if they have ever heard racism called a sin in the pulpits of their churches growing up. The answer is almost always no. That will be absolutely key to a revival for racial reconciliation and justice — seeing racism as much more than political, but rooted in sin, repentance, morality, and faith. That’s why I wrote America’s Original Sin and hoped it would become a tool for new conversations within and between churches across racial lines.

Exit polls showing that 81 percent of evangelical voters and a majority of white Christians voted for President Donald Trump in the 2016 election represents a "crisis in the Church" and shows that the Church is more racially divided than ever, the Rev. Jim Wallis has warned.
...

Many evangelical Christians who voted Trump into office have advocated for the president’s heavy-handed approach toward immigration.But some spiritual leaders say it’s fundamental to the faith that Christians open their arms and actively campaign for the rights of all, including and especially immigrants and refugees.

As the soloist belted a soulful rendition of Great is Thy Faithfulness, attendees of the 11th annual HKonJ Mass Meeting & Worship Service rose to their feet, impassioned for Saturday's Moral March. The event was hosted by the NC NAACP and was held at Rush Metropolitan AME Zion Church in Raleigh....

In my Georgetown class last week, we got into a lively discussion about President Trump’s refugee travel ban. One of my students has her law degree from Harvard and is now studying for a Master’s degree in public policy at the McCourt School of Public Policy, where I teach. She had been at D.C. airports most of the previous weekend, trying to help many of the international arrivals who had been detained. “This administration just doesn’t accept the rule of law,” she lamented, and said how discouraged she was feeling.

In order to make positive change for marginalized people, privileged people must care about and stand up for equal rights. The story of Viola Liuzzo shows us how deep the impact of true empathy is felt. Created Equal co-hosts Stephen Henderson and Laura Weber-Davis speak with Wayne State University Governor Kim Trent about Liuzzo, who traveled from her comfortable home and family in Detroit to help with the march on Montgomery, Alabama from Selma in 1965. Liuzzo felt compelled to help Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and other freedom fighters in making the march.

“It’s theological hypocrisy,” Jim Wallis, an evangelical and the founder of progressive Christian outlet Sojourners, told The Huffington Post.
Wallis pointed to the Biblical passage of Matthew 25, which talks of how at the end of times, “all the nations” will be gathered together and their people will be judged according to how they fed the hungry and welcomed strangers.
“Again and again, [the Bible says] that rulers, the government, society will be held accountable to God for how they treat the poor, the stranger, the immigrant,” Wallis said.

“Help us to do deep interrogation of the things we have believed that led to this moment,” prayed Lisa Sharon Harper, chief church engagement officer of Sojourners. “And so, God, I pray that you will give us strength, strength to resist.”

The Women’s March on Washington emerged as a response to the election of President Donald Trump. But it is also a movement for human rights. According to organizers, the goal of this powerful demonstration is to “affirm our shared humanity and pronounce our bold message of resistance and self-determination.”

If you paid even the slightest attention to the US election in 2016, you could not have missed the powerful phrase “Black lives matter”. The deaths of Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Tamir Rice, and other young black Americans at the hands of police triggered this new civil rights movement.

A conservative evangelical national leader called me during the election campaign. He reminded me how much he cared about abortion, religious liberty, and the Supreme Court. Then said, “But in Christian conscience, I cannot help put a man in the White House who is intellectually incompetent, has lived an amoral personal and public life, is dangerously immature, and is a racial bigot.

New Years is just around the corner, and one of the most rewarding resolutions you can make is to read more.
Good books aren’t just entertaining—they provide us with a new perspective on the world we live in and show how we can help be agents of change.
Here’s a look at six books about poverty, injustice, faith, the criminal justice system and human rights that will change the way you see major issues, and provide insight in how to effect them.

It’s been a tough year for America’s progressive faith community.
The religious left in this country is a racially and theologically diverse contingent of people who see social justice and progressive social values as an important part of their faith practice. The movement traces its legacy back to the Civil Rights Era and to the development of liberation theology ― the idea that people of faith must always stand up for the poor, oppressed, and marginalized of society.